Life is Sailing

As I walked to drop my children off at school one day, a delicate butterfly crossed my path. She did not fly but crawled along the ground, one of her legs being injured. Her bright beautiful wings fluttered open and closed. She longed to move off the concrete path and onto her favored flowers and leaves. Gently, ever so gently, I placed my hand on the ground. This dainty monarch gingerly climbed onto my fingers, her tiny legs tickling as she clung to my hand. After admiring her for a few minutes, enthralled with the ability to observe such a magnificent creature up close, I placed her on a nearby bush and wished her well on her journey.

Butterflies are fascinating creatures. They begin as crawling insects but metamorphosize into intricate flying adult insects. They become something completely new and beautiful. They transform.

Metamorphosis: (noun) a striking alteration in appearance, character, or circumstances.

Transform: (verb) to change in composition or structure; to change in character or condition.

Lately, I am struck with the contrast between gradual change versus sudden/abrupt transformation. Slowly over the course of seven years, I gradually changed from one who embraced the joys and challenges of homeschooling to one who was beaten down by the responsibility and time-consuming necessities of this great calling. A darkness overtook my brain, from which I struggled to escape. My heart felt dull to what before had brought peace and excitement. In talking with my sister, I realized I had reached the point of burn out. I was burned out in homeschooling. Something needed to change. What could I do?

It didn’t change my burn out feeling and the weight I carried, but I did make the decision to put my children in school. My mind and heart needed to heal, needed space to breathe again. This was the best decision I could have made. As the start of the school year approached, I enjoyed getting my children ready for school, buying the school supplies, meeting the teachers, biking to the school, and talking about this new adventure with them. My resilient children were nervous but excited as well. They heard my cry for space, loved me, and knew this was what needed to happen.

Yet when school began for my children, I remained in limbo-land. What was I supposed to do with myself? I quickly discovered I enjoy being busy. I needed a purpose. So I began searching for jobs, volunteering, renewing a working license I had let lapse, some way to plug into service for others and a community of adults. Progress felt slow, but I was making forward movement and interacting with some people in new environments.

Then, I decided I would sign up for sailing classes as well as put my name in for a lottery system in a sailing program called the Wet Hens, a group of usually women who have developed a mentoring-style sailing instruction program. I enjoyed working out and especially with people, again searching for community. I was surprised when both options were available to me, and I found myself committed to sailing three times a week.

The first day of class, as I sat listening to my sailing instructor, sitting on a black folding chair beside another enthusiastic newbie, I experienced a sudden lightening of my heart and freeing of my brain. I believe tears even came into my eyes as I physically felt the burdens from the past seven years lifting from my shoulders. Here I could breathe. Here I would grow. Here I would be challenged, and fall, but would rise up again with a smile, laughing or grimacing with my fellow classmates, together. I knew it and proclaimed such gratitude to God in my heart for bringing me to this place of healing. This was a day of transformation. That day, I became a sailor. In my heart, I knew I always would be.

Transformation. God continues to work in transformations, creating a striking alteration to what once was.

2 Corinthians 3:18
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.